Today Stan Hill celebrates the release of his first novel, "The Love You Leave Behind," and Friday night he directs the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus in "Exile."

Both titles hint that he's got leaving on his mind, to paraphrase the country song, and he does. After Friday's concert and performances this weekend and next at Festival 2000 in San Jose, Hill leaves to becomes director of the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus in Minneapolis. Moving from gay mecca to gay Siberia to run a smaller chorus with a smaller budget would seem to be a nonstarter, but Hill is not afraid to leave a good thing. If he had been, he would never have given up a faculty position at California State University at Fullerton and taken a $25,000 pay cut to become director of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus in 1989.

"This is a cause. This is not just a job," says Hill, who has directed the chorus for half its 22 years. "What you're trying to do is enlighten, educate, affirm. I think the chorus is the very best frontispiece for the gay community. I think it shows us at our very, very best."

That is the way Hill expects to leave it Friday, with the world premiere of "Exile," which was commissioned by the chorus and will be accompanied by a CD release, the 10th under Hill. The program, "A Capital Affair," features the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C. It will be the San Francisco group's last concert at Masonic Auditorium before moving to the Palace of Fine Arts next season. The chorus sang at Masonic for seven years until last year's Christmas concert helped the chorus decide to leave Nob Hill, and Hill decide to leave the chorus.

On that night, Hill counted 42 other Christmas events in the Bay Area, and they all seemed to be on Nob Hill. There was gridlock. Cars couldn't park. Cabs couldn't get there. People couldn't get cabs. All the walk-up tickets Hill expected to be sold couldn't be sold.

"There are only so many discretionary dollars that you're going to find in a given community, and Minneapolis does not have the competition we have (in San Francisco)," Hill, 53, says from his office behind the Castro Street Muni Metro stop.

"We have a great symphony, a great opera, a great ballet. Their symphony is pretty good, their ballet is coming along and their opera is not really happening."

But their gay chorus is. Minneapolis' chorus has an established subscriber list and a concert hall, two things the San Francisco chorus has tried and failed to secure. Audience and onstage support is derived largely from a Minnesota public school system that still offers choir, and a Lutheran college tradition that refines it.

"When you get to a community chorus like this you have to depend on some kind of preparation and training," he says. "We get a lot of guys who walk in here and the first thing you ask them is, 'What experience do you have?' And they say, 'Well, I've never sung before in my life.' "

The San Francisco chorus will take and train any aspiring singer who can pay the membership dues and buy a tuxedo. Untrained voices are not the biggest challenge Hill has faced. When he arrived in 1989, the chorus was one-third its present strength of 180 voices.

"AIDS had just wiped them out and there was a kind of a psychological effect," he recalls. "It was beginning to get depressing, the chorus. Every announcement was 'memorial services this weekend include . . .' and 'this guy's sicker' and 'this guy's sicker.' So I tried to bring a positive energy to everything and give them hope, give them future, give them a place to aspire to."

There are now about 200 gay choirs but the San Francisco chorus was the first of its kind in the world, and it continues to offer a platform for acceptance.

"A great deal of our chorines use the chorus to come out to their family and friends," Hill says. "It's real hard to get mad at somebody and have all these issues when they're up there singing beautiful music, and there's your brother, there's your son, there's your co- worker standing up there giving his all."

For the chorus' first 10 years, novelty was enough to draw an audience. "Now the challenge of gay choruses is 'What's the gimmick? What's going to get the audience into the house?' " he says. "I believe it's entertainment without compromising musicality."

Hill has a strong visual sense. When he saw the TV miniseries of Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove," he was taken with the story but dissatisfied with the ending. He thought he could do better, so he spent five years writing his own epic Western, a gay-themed romance.

"The Love You Leave Behind" turned out to be longer than McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove." It is so thick that Xlibris, the marketer through which Hill is self-publishing, broke it into two 500-page volumes ($25 each hardback, $18 paper). Hill will sign copies from 2 to 5 p.m. today at the offices of the Gay Men's Chorus. A portion of the sales will benefit the San Francisco chorus.

This is the second time Hill has left sunny California for the snowy Midwest. He earned his doctorate in Illinois and grew to appreciate the changing seasons. As with his concert programs, Hill likes moving from the dark into the light.

"Having gone from the winter of black and white into the color of spring is something we don't get here in California," he says. "There's a cycle going on. That was a real revelation. I want to see it again."

WOMAN PICKS UP BATON FOR GAY MEN'S CHORUS

Kathleen McGuire will become the first woman to conduct the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus when she replaces departing director Stan Hill next month.

McGuire, 35, just completed her doctorate in musical arts at the University of Colorado, and this is her first full-time job as a director. While earning her degree, McGuire spent three years as director of the Rainbow Chorus, a gay and lesbian group in Fort Collins, Colo.

"I've become aware of the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus as one of the biggest and best gala choruses, if not the best, in the world," said McGuire, a native of Melbourne, Australia, where her brother helped found that city's gay chorus.

As part of her dissertation, McGuire edited Gareth Valentine's "Requiem in Memory of All Those Who Have Died of AIDS" and conducted its American and Australian premieres.

Reached by phone at her home in Boulder, Colo., McGuire was excited that her first full-time job was a first for the chorus as well. "I think what they're looking for and what I'm looking for are the same thing," she said. "They want someone who can help them move forward musically, and that's what I want."

McGuire will make her California debut July 24 when she conducts the Rainbow Chorus at Festival 2000 in San Jose, the world's largest international choral event.